Title: .A. DIRECTIVE 93/13 ON UNFAIR TERMS IN CONSUMER CONTRACTS

This directive covers abuses of power by the seller or supplier, in particular against one-sided standard contracts and the unfair exclusion of essential rights in contract”. It applies to the contracts that have not been individually negotiated by the parties, or that have been drafted in advance and the consumer has therefore not been able to influence the substance of the term” (see article 3).

 In our view of an AmI environment, users are often confronted with non-negotiable one-sided general terms and conditions. In these general terms and conditions, the data protection rights of the user will be unilaterally defined by the profiler, while if the envisioned AmI world does come about, consumers will become increasingly dependent on AmI services.

The directive imposes mandatory rules of consumer protection: contracts should be drafted in plain, intelligible language; the consumer should be given an opportunity to examine all of the terms; and, if the terms are in doubt, the interpretation most favourable to the consumer should prevail (article 5).  

Thinking on the concept of “ambient law” - a law that is effective without the subject being forced to actively agree every minute with contractual terms and conditions - one could imagine that consumer protection law, in particular this directive, could be the starting point for a new approach towards the protection of the user by obliging AmI service providers (using profiles) to draft contracts in a technologically intelligible language that gives the intelligent agent of the consumer an opportunity to examine all of the terms and to respond accordingly by refusing or allowing certain decisions, profiling practises etc.